Colorado Springs City Councilman Tim Leigh made a pitch Tuesday to save a late-19th-century boiler room from destruction. The crumbling downtown building was formerly attached to an ice house, which was demolished last week. Leigh said he hopes to rally the public to preserve the remaining structure.

“We’ve been knocking down our Western heritage in the name of progress. The terrible thing is that we are knocking down history,” Leigh said. “I believe that if we reach the past, we could find our future.”

Leigh and John Hazlehurst, a columnist for The Colorado Springs Independent, are trying to prevent destruction of the boiler building. Although Leigh thinks that the boiler warehouse is “a beautiful old building,” he admitted that it is “a mess structurally.”

“To even walk in the building would be a hazard to your health right now,” he said.

The pair are likely too late, however. “In terms of preservation, we are really Johnny-come-latelies to this project,”  Leigh said. He speculated that without money, the remaining boiler room will be destroyed in three to four days.

Former senior city planner Tim Scanlon said the building first shows up on city maps in 1907. The boiler building closed in 1940s, and the ice house in the 1950s, he said.

The police, Leigh said, set fire to the building as part of a training exercise.

Olson Plumbing & Heating owns the building and hired GE Johnson to tear it down. James Rimsza, who worked on the demolition, said the project started last week. The building’s bricks, he said, were in very poor condition and easily crumbled.

Olson Plumbing & Heating did not return a phone call seeking comment Tuesday afternoon.

Hazlehurst said he drove by the building Sunday and noted that most of it had been demolished. After alerting Leigh, a real estate broker, demolition was stopped, pending negotiations with the building’s owner, Hazlehurst said.

The ice house has been reduced to a pile of rubble, but the old boiler building remains standing. According to Hazlehurst, the boiler building produced steam that heated the El Paso County court house and jail across the street, both of which have been replaced with a parking lot. The steam was conducted into underground tunnels, which were innovative for the era, Hazlehurst said.

On Tuesday, workers on site did not know that a movement had been started to preserve the remaining structure.

Although Hazlehurst and Leigh said they are optimistic about the boiler room’s future, Hazlehurst admitted that the building would require “an extensive and substantial renovation.”

“Our theoretical angel would come in with a large construction crew of extremely skilled people, and they would make the building stable,” Hazlehurst said.

Neither Hazlehurst nor Leigh could foresee any specific uses for the building. The old boiler room and former ice house are in a city urban renewal zone. Leigh views the effort to save the boiler building as part of a large project of using “urban renewal as a technique for urban development.”

Darcy West, left, and Vicky Slade check out the demolition at 118 W. Vermijo Ave. Tuesday. Councilman Tim Leigh is trying to save the other side of the structure. Photo by CHRISTIAN MURDOCK, THE GAZETTE

Christian murdock

The side of the building that Councilman Tim Leigh is trying to save. Photo by CHRISTIAN MURDOCK, THE GAZETTE

Christian murdock